


Empathy is Something Learned

by bimmyshrug



Category: IT (1990), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Bisexual Richie Tozier, Crushes, Crying Eddie Kaspbrak, Insecure Richie Tozier, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Language, Parent Death, Richie Tozier is a Little Shit, Young Eddie Kaspbrak, Young Richie Tozier, babey reddie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28544181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bimmyshrug/pseuds/bimmyshrug
Summary: Richie doesn’t know why he can’t ever seem to shut the fuck up. He hates the knowing looks and he sincerely doesn’t like pushing his friends to the point of being actually, genuinely angry with him, but he supposes it has something to do with being equal parts terrified of being seen, and being forgotten. It’d be real fucking easy to shut the fuck up if he wasn’t afraid that his friends would just as quickly forget about him altogether. And that’s why he can’t fucking stop himself from interjecting into every conversation, and nudging into every space, and filling every silence. Because if it stays quiet for too long, they might decide they like it better that way. If those spaces remain, they’ll fill them with someone better. Someone less annoying- someone better at being a good friend than Richie is.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 71





	Empathy is Something Learned

**Author's Note:**

> [Come see me on Tumblr!](https://bimmyshrug.tumblr.com/)
> 
> just a short lil thing about Eddie being the one who helps Richie start to understand when he takes jokes too far. he's a little turd in this ngl

Richie rarely finds himself looking at Bill or Mike or Ben and thinking about them _that way,_ though it does happen occasionally. It happens more often with Stan, but even still, it’s easy to push the thought away by forcing out some mean-spirited quip that inevitably makes Stan angry with him, so that he can focus on that instead. Focus on how all of them barely put up with him as a friend as it is, so even without considering the sick feeling Richie gets in his stomach sometimes when he doesn’t know where to put his eyes while they all go swimming together, he knows he should count himself lucky that they still bother with him at all.

It’s not like that with Eddie, and Richie really hates that. Because when he’s mean to Eddie, or teases him- which is admittedly more often than he teases any of the others- Eddie gives it right back. He doesn’t frown at Richie in that solemn way that Bill and Ben do, or laugh it off like Mike and Beverly, or roll his eyes and ignore him like Stan usually does. He bitches right back, and then Richie burrows down deeper into this stupid fucking hole he’s dug for himself, because it makes him never want to stop. It’s so much worse with Eddie.

It’s not like he’s stupid, he knows what this means. And he might even think he’s gay, if he didn’t feel the same brand of feelings for Beverly as he does the rest of them. Richie realizes one hot afternoon while they’re all lazing around in the clubhouse, partially shielded from the humidity in the cool, damp air, that he might be in love with all of them. Not in a way that he understands very well, and not in the way that he thinks he’d want to marry all of them or anything like that, but in the way that he imagines kissing them sometimes and thinks about them all the time, and feels sick with himself for doing so.

So it’s easiest to flirt with Beverly, obviously. At least it should be, but she has this way of looking at him, of raising her eyebrow at him with that smirk on her face and that fucking glint in her eyes, like she knows his heart isn’t really in it when he asks her what color her panties are and braces for the inevitable punch to the arm.

And she probably does know, in the same way that he’s sure Stan knows, because he catches Stan looking at him like he knows too much sometimes. Stan always sort of always acts like an old fuck anyway, but there’s something horrifyingly adult and observant about the way he looks at Richie when he’s up to his usual antics, like he knows it’s all a façade. Like he can tell it’s an act so that he can trick them into not bothering to look deeper.

It’s fucking scary, and Richie doesn’t know why he can’t ever seem to shut the fuck up. He hates the knowing looks and he sincerely doesn’t like pushing his friends to the point of being actually, genuinely angry with him, but he supposes it has something to do with being equal parts terrified of being seen, and being forgotten. It’d be real fucking easy to shut the fuck up if he wasn’t afraid that his friends would just as quickly forget about him altogether. And that’s why he can’t fucking stop himself from interjecting into every conversation, and nudging into every space, and filling every silence. Because if it stays quiet for too long, they might decide they like it better that way. If those spaces remain, they’ll fill them with someone better. Someone less annoying- someone better at being a good friend than Richie is.

Especially Eddie. He doesn’t know why Eddie is special, he just is. Always has been. Richie doesn’t get nervous around him or anything like that, he isn’t shy. He doesn’t ever find himself at a loss for words. Not because he’s some hyper-confident Danny Zuko type, but because he doesn’t have anything to lose, most of the time. If he’s always expecting to strike out, it never comes as a shock or a disappointment, and then he’s pleasantly surprised when he ends up managing not to scare someone off within minutes of meeting them.

But something about Eddie made Richie want to scare him off when they first met. Eddie was friends with Bill first, and then Richie and Bill became friends, and Bill asked if they could all play together at his house. Quite frankly, Richie already felt threatened by the fact that he wasn’t Bill’s best friend, because Bill was his only friend, so he hated Eddie before they even properly met.

It wasn’t easy to be mean to Eddie because Eddie was so kind, but Richie managed. When Eddie started talking about how much he loved Spiderman, Richie made sure to tell him how stupid Spiderman is, and that Batman is obviously way cooler, and that having stupid spider powers would be gross anyway. When Eddie offered to let Richie play with his Legos, Richie made sure to insult the lackluster variety of pieces he had, before asking Bill if he wanted to go play on the tire swing that the Denbroughs had tied to the branch of a tree in their backyard, being sure to turn away from Eddie as he asked, so he’d know he wasn’t invited.

But he came with them anyway, and Richie immediately claimed the first ride so that Eddie couldn’t, planting his sneakers into the worn patch of dirt beneath the swing to spin himself around and around to wind the rope up tight, so that when he lifted his feet and let go, he’d hopefully spin so fast that he’d throw up into the grass.

“R-Rich, be easy. My dad just fixed the swing because you f-frayed the last rope so bad,” Bill warned him, and Richie dug his feet deeper into the dirt to twist the rope as tightly as it would go.

“Sure thing, mom.”

“Ma doesn’t let me go on swings. She says they’re dangerous,” Eddie told them gravely, and Richie barked out a cruel laugh. Eddie looked at him with a bothered little furrow in his brow that brought Richie a glimmer of satisfaction, right before he lifted his feet and let the rope unwind, sending spinning him so fast that he had to hold onto his glasses to stop them from flying off of the bridge of his nose.

“Ma says kids get hurt from falling off swings all the time,” Eddie’s blurry, indistinguishable form insisted from somewhere beside him, and Richie closed his eyes as the dizziness started to get so bad that his stomach began to churn.

“Well your mom is a wacko.”

“No she’s not!” Eddie raised his voice, and Richie felt satisfaction swell in his chest as the swing stopped and he placed his sneakers into the dirt to steady himself, though it did nothing to stop his vision from spinning and spinning and spinning.

“Yeah, she is.”

“ _Your_ mom is a wacko!”

“No, my parents are normal,” Richie insisted as the nausea began to travel up from his stomach, and he worried that he really was going to throw up. “More normal than yours, anyway. At least my dad’s alive.”

“Richie-!” Bill began, but whatever he was going to say was lost as Eddie’s unsteady form rushed over to Richie, stuttering and skipping with the rest of the world as his eyes still attempted to adjust.

And that made it all the more impossible to brace himself when Eddie’s hands shoved hard against the middle of his chest and sent him falling backwards off of the swing and into the dirt, with one of his feet still painfully twisted into the hollow of the tire. His glasses ended up somewhere in the grass next to him, which did nothing to help him reorient himself, and he tried desperately to regain his composure so he could get up and push Eddie back.

But Eddie stomped over to where he was still lying on the ground with his foot dangling in the air above him, and Richie couldn’t make out the features of Eddie’s face, but he could hear the tears in his voice when he leaned down close to Richie’s face to yell “I _hate you!_ Why are you so _mean?!”_

Richie didn’t like the feeling that he got in his belly when Eddie said that. It didn’t feel good like before, and his mouth started to fill with warm saliva that he struggled to swallow down.

The commotion must have alerted Bill’s mom, because when Richie’s vision finally steadied itself and he managed to get his glasses back on his face, he saw her shuffling quickly into the backyard with an infant Georgie resting on her hip.

“Richie! Richie, what happened? How many times do I have to tell you not to spin so fast on that thing? You’re going to split your head open one of these days!” She scolded him urgently as he managed to finally wiggle his foot free and drop heavily onto the ground, glancing up at Eddie’s red, panicked face and glistening eyes through the speckles of dirt on his lenses.

“What happened?” She demanded a second time, placing her free hand on her hip and raising an eyebrow expectantly, and Richie tore his eyes away from Eddie to look up at her before he answered.

“Mom, Eddie-” Bill began before he could think of anything to say, and Richie interrupted with the first thing that came to mind.

“I wanted to see if I could break the sound barrier!”

Sharon rolled her eyes at him but smiled softly as she did it, and Richie saw Eddie’s shoulders drop in relief out of the corner of his eye.

“I’ll start making you wear a helmet every time you come over here if you don’t start being more careful, Rich. I mean it.”

“Okay, okay, I will. Promise.”

“I’ll drive you boys home for dinner in about an hour. Try to manage not to get yourself killed between now and then.”

“Sure thing, Mrs. D,” Richie flashed her a toothy grin and a finger gun, and that seemed to be enough to convince her that he wasn’t concussed, because she laughed softly once more before taking Georgie back inside.

Once they heard the backdoor of the house close again, Eddie walked over to him while nervously wringing his hands. He still looked a little mad, but mostly he looked upset, and the sick feeling returned to Richie’s belly.

“I- I’m sorry I pushed you. Are you okay?” Eddie asked him softly, and Richie wanted to make a joke, but he didn’t think he should.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I shouldn’t have said that about your dad,” Richie told him, and then, more naturally than he thought he ever had before, he added, “I’m sorry.”

Eddie nodded but he didn’t say anything, and Richie didn’t know if that meant that his apology was accepted or not, but Eddie helped him get up out of the dirt, so he figured that was a good sign. Bill was watching their exchange with wide, nervous eyes, and Richie pulled his pants up comically high before tugging on his make-believe suspenders. He mimed tipping his hat in Bill’s direction, putting on the British Guy Voice he’d been working on.

“Billiam, old chap, ya look like ya seen a ghost! I didn’t crack the ol’ bonce too hard, don’t fret!”

Bill just blinked at him, and as Richie was considering switching to his Irish Cop Voice instead, Eddie began shrieking with laughter.

“That’s the crummiest voice I ever heard, Richie,” he insisted through persisting giggles, and his face still looked a little red, but he didn’t have tears in his eyes anymore.

Richie promised himself after that that he would never make Eddie that upset ever again, because Eddie was so nice, and Richie liked it better when he was smiling and laughing at his jokes instead. He figured it would be easy not to, since he knew Eddie clearly wouldn't let him get away with being a dick, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> babey reddie <3


End file.
